


Lycanthropy

by stormae



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: ? - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Explicit Language, F/M, Fluff, Minor Character Death, incase the title wasn't obvious enough, what even is this?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 13:23:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10697892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormae/pseuds/stormae
Summary: It halted its movement and fell backwards, indicating that you had hit a vital and effectively killed the threat.The threat. The werewolf.





	Lycanthropy

The sensation of cold metal against warm palms was a familiar one to you. You readjusted your grip, lifted your arm, squinted one eye to focus the other, and squeezed your index finger against the curved metal of the trigger. The gun kicked backwards in your hands as it recoiled against the violent motion of a silver bullet rocketing from the chamber, your wrists moving easily with the motion. You had been well prepared for it. It was a feeling that you were perhaps too comfortable with.

As your arm straightened and was once again a line parallel with the floor, the bullet wedged itself in the rapidly moving target at the other end of the training hall. The dummy halted its movement and fell backwards, indicating that you had hit a vital and effectively killed the threat.

The threat. The werewolf.

Another mechanised target leapt from the sidelines, a category above the one you had just taken down. This one was bigger and moved more erratically, its jerky movements making it impossible to watch it without blurring your vision.

The increased difficulty did not phase you. You squinted your eye again, training it down the barrel of the gun, your trajectory followed the nearing target. Before it could get within the ‘danger zone’ of your ten metre radius, your finger squeezed around the trigger and released another bullet, nailing the target right between the eyes and knocking it ‘dead’ on the spot before you had a chance to steady your arm after the jolt of the shot. The converted silver Magnum were large and heavy, but everyone at the garrison did enough physical exercise to handle holding the weight for extended periods of time.

There were no more training simulators to release. That had been the most difficult one, and you already knew you’d taken it down in record time. Beating your own record, that is.

“Brilliant, Y/N,” your commander praised you, walking towards you with an iPad resting against his forearm, putting your times into your file. “You’ve bested yourself, yet again.”

You smiled tepidly, opening the magazine and letting the residual, colossal silver bullets spill out into the palm of your hand. They were as long as a thumb and thick as a glue stick with razor sharps points on the end, designed perfectly to pierce the pelts of the werewolves that plagued your world.

Werewolves had developed into a serious problem since they had returned from the brink of extinction. They were almost eradicated from the earth in the seventeenth century, and had laid low for several hundreds of years, regrowing their numbers and lulling the dominant human race into a sense of false security.

Half a century ago, a pack of forty had emerged from a forest in Russia to storm Moscow and had very nearly succeeded in taking the Kremlin, had they not been terminated with nuclear weaponry. The attack had been out of the blue and absolutely devastating, catching humanity off guard and taking out innocents in the process as a result.

In the immediate wake of the attack, the world had descended into chaos. Not only did Moscow have to deal with the consequences of their nuclear action, other werewolf packs started emerging from all corners of the world, accumulatively numbering more than half a million globally. Humanity had gotten too cocksure, and they paid the price. The werewolves took major areas of land within the first week, sending scared civilians skittering into military strongholds and machinery the world hadn’t ever seen before being revealed and pointed at the werewolves and their growing power.

However, humans had managed to combat them hundreds of years ago, so they were more than capable with a little preparation.

The military were supplied with a new type of bullet that your ancestors hadn’t had the fortune of using, a huge slug made of sliver, laced with wolfsbane and sharpened to a deadly point. If executed effectively, the bullet would kill a wolf instantaneously.

The culling began immediately, and the humans pushed back against the werewolf onslaught. Major cities and towns were regained, and the few wolves that managed to escape the ammunition fire retreated into the forests from which they had emerged, with their tails literally between their legs.

But that victory hadn’t been enough for humanity. The tentative surrender of the animalistic species was insufficient consolation for the destruction the world was still reeling from. They wanted every werewolf eliminated, for good this time. There would be no assuming that they were all gone, as previous generations had mistakenly done. No, there would be a systematic eradication of every werewolf on the planet.

And that was where you came in, stood in a garrison training hall with the weight of your Magnum reminding you that you were a soldier specialising in the Therianthropic Lycanthrope division, or a TL for short. Governments around the world had established garrisons to train TLs, pumping through new soldiers constantly. Kids were recruited out of middle school or the early years of high school if they were seen as having a naturally athletic disposition, were enrolled by parents or joined out of their own volition, but training generally started when your were thirteen or fourteen years old.

You looked around the room at your cohort. You’d all been at the garrison for at least seven years, and were the elite unit. There were maybe fifteen of your peers, all clad in black pants and long-sleeved tops and had skin decorated with scars or still-healing wounds, all watching you in reverent awe.

Not only were you top of your class at the garrison, you were the best TL in Korea, and probably most of east Asia. You could boast a 99% accuracy rate and the highest kill count on the Eurasian continent since a similar TL had come through fifteen years ago, but you were really not one to boast. You weren’t much of a talker, actually. Mostly because all anybody talked about in the garrison were head counts and whether the moon was waxing or waning, and you didn’t really care for any of that.

In school, you hadn’t been good at much other than PE, and at the time the military recruited you it seemed like a sensible enough choice. Your parents had sent you off to the garrison quite happily, mostly because they got benefits from the state if their kid was a TL, and they also got major bragging rights within their friendship groups. It was admirable to have a family member serving as a TL. Or at least that was the public opinion. It was probably more a coping mechanism than anything else. As you looked around at your peers, you noted that, apart from the commanders, you were the oldest at the garrison. Being a TL wasn’t a profession that aged you well. The commanders were the lucky few that managed to live past the age of twenty-two and got taken off the frontline, and none of them were unscathed. Your commander that was currently congratulating you on your incredible time and impeccable aim had a pale scar marring the skin from the end of his right eyebrow down to the lower left corner of his mouth. He was insanely lucky to still have both eyes, although one was a concerning, slightly milkier brown than the other.

You were the only one amongst your cohort to be relatively unscathed. You had healed claw marks on your back and a nasty, ragged scar down your left thigh, but in comparison to your teammates, you were like new. It was mostly due to the fact you rarely let a werewolf get close enough to touch you, or if they were, it was you damaging them.

—

“Y/N,” your commander called you forwards from the line you stood in, shoulder to shoulder with your unit. You stepped forwards, holding out your hand. He dropped three magazines into your palm, each packed with the weighty bullets. You fell back into line. “You’ll be patrolling solo this evening.”

That wasn’t uncommon, especially when you were still two weeks from a full moon. As the top ranked TL in the garrison, you were often entrusted with a suspicious area by yourself. You worked more effectively individually, anyway, even if it was a bit lonely. The other TLs in your unit were more than capable, but even they had trouble keeping up with your ability and rapid thought process.

Seven of you were packed into a dual engine transport helicopter and lifted from the garrison, flown rapidly towards the areas of the country dense with trees and known for werewolves. There were not many safe-havens of forestry for wolf packs anymore, with the eradication process slowly coming to an end. There were still several thousand in the world, and the ones left were by far the strongest, but in another ten years they would all be extinct. When the government talked about their declining population, others cheered and your fellow soldiers practically exploded with rowdy excitement. You often removed yourself from those situations.

You had struggled on your first mission. You’d been inserted into a pre-established team of older TLs, all twenty or twenty-one, with you being only sixteen and entirely unexperienced. You’d never seen a werewolf apart from the propagandised images on the TV, whereas these TLs were some of the most competent and experienced in the game. You had shown such adeptness in your training that you had been accelerated into the field.

When the group of you had come across a werewolf after plenty of tense minutes crunching your way through the leaf-litter, you had found yourself frozen with your finger on the trigger, unable to lift your arm and release the bullet. It had been a huge beta, fully transformed and rabid with violent anger once it set eyes on your human forms.

It had moved at blinding speed, its hulking grey body smashing into two of the older TLs and crushing the life from them beneath its supersize in an instant. You couldn’t tear your eyes from their lifeless bodies, but the remaining two TLs demanded your attention as they attempted to aim at the beta who was already enhanced by the full moon.

You turned just in time to see the huge beast pin one of the nicer seniors of the group to the ground, ready to sink its fangs into her face, when your brain clicked into gear. You were no longer paralysed with the curious paradox of severe fear and warped sympathy towards the animal, you knew your job. It hadn’t taken you more than a second to lift your arm, aim it at the distracted wolf’s eye and shoot, bypassing the wolf’s incredibly thick skull and nestling itself inside the brain, taking down the wolf in an instant.

Four years later and there you were, deployed on solo mission in the heart of Gotjawal Forest, your military boots squelching against the floor and your thin, skin-tight t-shirt doing little to protect your from the bite of the damp night air. You could hear the tiny sounds of the implants in your eyes adjusting your vision to the complete darkness, giving you night vision on par with the creatures you were hunting. You supposed it was ironic that your eyes had been technologically enhanced to function perfectly with almost no light, but you were still lugging around a heavy pistol and had a cumbersome silver knife in a holder strapped to your waist. But sometimes technology could only help you so much.

Your attention was drawn back to the present by the minute yet unmistakable sound of crunching leaves under a padded foot. It took years to be able to hear those sounds without stilling your breathing, to be able to hear them instinctively. You clicked the safety off your Magnum and peered above one of the huge, cold boulders that were scattered around the forest floor.

Your clothes were doused in a solution that neutralised your scent to the wolves, so as long as you remained still you were undetectable. Your could see a reasonably sized black beast making its way through the forestry, muzzle a sticky, tell tale red. With silent, deft movements you lifted the gun and took aim, not sparing a moment for hesitation or doubt before firing. The silenced bullet whizzed from the barrel and lodged itself in the wolf’s neck, sending it crashing to the floor with a muted ‘oof,’ dead on impact.

The tiny sound in the quiet forest was enough, though, to alert another of the dead wolf’s pack mates that had probably been patrolling with it. There was the sound of a quickening gait, a walk turned jog turned run, and you swung around to press your back against the boulder and raise your gun to the oncoming threat. The wolf, this one very large, launched dramatically from the undergrowth, teeth already bared as it threw itself at you. That was its fatal mistake, leaving a lovely opening for you to send a bullet flying into its throat. You rolled out of the way as the wolf tumbled to the ground, fallen just like its comrade over the boulder.

They normally patrolled like this in pairs, so you were unfortunately taken by surprise when a third wolf propelled itself from the underbrush, its teeth sinking into your arm as you and it rolled to the floor. You abstained from making a sound, rolling with the creature to prevent any further damage to your arm as you pressed the cool metal of the gun against the beast’s soft throat and fired, the only indication that the bullet had left the chamber being the sickening angle at which the wolf’s head cracked backwards before lolling to the side.

You manually opened its jaws and extracted your gored arm, muttering a quiet ‘shit’ under your breath. Another scar to add to your collection. You should have been more careful, less arrogant. The helicopter you and the other TLs had arrived in wasn’t exactly subtle, and as much as the government would love to convince the public that werewolves are an inferior, stupid race, they were the furthest thing from it.

You didn’t have to worry about being ‘turned’ by the bite mark on your arm. Unlike the myths and pop culture renditions of the lycanthrope that had developed over the years when it was thought they were extinct, the condition wasn’t spreadable, but a hereditary gene. No, you would scar just as you would if a normal grey wolf bitten you, expect the teeth marks were larger.

You slipped your gun back into its holster and plugged in your kills to the multipurpose, bomb-proof smart watch strapped to your wrist. You knew that, although it was early and you’d only taken down three wolves—far lower than your usual nightly quota out on patrol—you should head back to the recon spot. Scattered throughout the forest were helipads surrounded by polished concrete walls, barbed wire and machine guns stationed in watch towers, manned during big operations. The one you had been dropped in at was your meeting spot, and both the safest and smartest option for you in that moment.

You started walking, but only made it barely a hundred metres before you sank down against a tree trunk, fighting the urge to touch your arm. You knew they’d want to see it without your fingers getting in the way so that they could test the saliva and see if the werewolves were still breeding out there. I’ll just rest for a minute, you told yourself, breathing deeply, in through your nose and out through your mouth, trying to stabilise your erratic heartbeat from the adrenaline rush of taking on the wolves. You knew you needed to slow the pumping of the organ if you wanted to minimise blood loss.

As you focused on your breathing and forgetting the pain, still more characteristic werewolf sounds hit your ears. You weighed your options, slowly removing your gun from its holster and considering whether it would be best to shoot it, wait it out or put out a possibly useless distress call.

But then the sounds changed from those of a wolf to those of a human, an unfamiliar voice hitting your ears.

You had only seen a half-shifted werewolf once or twice in your years with the garrison, so you physically couldn’t contain your curiosity. You shifted, wincing at the loud sound of you boot crunching leaves beneath your feet, and peered around the trunk, taking in a certainly peculiar sight.

A young man around your age, tall and clad in shorts of an odd-looking, synthetic material, a weighty necklace and no shirt stood, crouched over a concerned looking fawn and the dead carcass of a deer. From his warm, light brown hair sprouted fluffy brown ears of the same colour, his eyes were an intense, glimmering amber and his hands and feet were misshapen and claw-like. By the time you’d recovered from taking in his unusual aspects and his undeniably attractive human torso, you realised that the wolf should have certainly heard you crunching away in your uncomfortable crouched position, but he was far too distracted by the baby animal in front of him.

A wolf had apparently taken down the deer, leaving her body half-eaten and mangled, thus the fawn without much hope. Normally a werewolf—ever the opportunistic predator—would come across the tiny creature and devour it as a light snack, but this boy in particular was straying from the norm, crouching down and extending a dangerous looking hand to the timid creature that was too distraught to run.

The boy was crooning to the little fawn, “Come here, little thing, I’ll help you out. I’ll bottle feed you milk… or something. Please, I won’t hurt you.”

What is this, some kind of vegetarian, humanitarian werewolf? You mused, trying to make sense of the situation. Upon taking in the unusual scene, you forgot where you were, and shifted your weight once more. You snapped a twig beneath you this time, the noise far too loud to go unnoticed to the wolf’s super hearing, even if he was seemingly incredibly distracted.

You pulled your head back from where it was peering around the tree, your heart hammering in your chest once more. Your inner monologue was a steady rhythm of shit, fuck, shit and your arm was throbbing all the worse as you readjusted your non-dominant grip on the Magnum, preparing for the worst. This would be a tricky bind for you to get out of.

There was the sound of running footsteps, but to your surprise, they were still human. The wolf boy came skidding around the tree, dropping to his knees in front of you, the picture of concern on his handsome face. The slope of his nose and the tan of his skin was even more pleasing up close, you apparently had the time to notice in your predicament.

His hands fluttered around your weakened form, “I smell blood,” his voice, smooth and deep, said, “are you ok? What happened? What did you do to yourself?”

But then everything seemed to catch up to him, and he froze in place, hands still hovering uselessly over your bleeding arm. His eyes flickered up to your own, which you were sure were blown wide with a mixture of confusion, surprise and horror, before taking a hurried step backwards. As he did so, you lifted the heavy gun and pointed it directly between his eyes. He was close enough that, even with your non-dominant arm, you were sure you wouldn’t miss. You know that all you have to do was pull the trigger. He was standing there like an immobile target, not even fully shifted, putting up no fight. That could all change in a moment, and you knew in the rational part of your brain that now was a perfect opportunity to take out yet another werewolf and probably save yourself. Your finger adjusted over the trigger, but you found yourself hesitating for the first time in four years. You couldn’t do it.

Taking in the gun you were pointing at him, a bizarre mix of confusion and heartbreak that you didn’t understand crashed over his face all at once, throwing you off even further. It lasted for an extended moment, before his countenance shifted to something more aggravated and disappointed.

“You can put your gun down, your arm is shaking,” he said, his voice tighter than before. You realised he was right, the effort of holding the heavy gun aloft in your less used arm proving an effort under the duress of the situation. You didn’t heed his words though, simply staring him down. He rolled his eyes, “You won’t be able to shoot me, anyway. Your body won’t let you. Your mind won’t let you.”

Your confusion deepened further, “What?”

Something flickered across his face at the sound of your voice, before it settled back to thoroughly pissed off. “I’m your mate. You can’t be the one to kill me,” he explained, bitterness coating every syllable that left his mouth.

You felt your thrashing heart stutter to a halt, your hand holding the gun falling to your lap as you stared up at the boy. “What do you mean? That’s literally impossible.” Humans and werewolves were not capable of forming the mate bond. Humans weren’t able to feel the full range of senses that accompanied the bond, hence why you hadn’t realised upon laying eyes on the boy in front of you, but he had. It was an unfair relationship, thus nature didn’t allow it. Human and werewolf bonding was considered a recessive gene that was slowly bred out of the werewolf population as time went on and wolves rejected their human mates. Inter-species mate bonds were no longer present in the wolf community. Or that was the way it was meant to be. You and the boy before you were living disproof of that theory.

A wave of nausea and lightheadedness hit you with force, causing your head to loll back against the trunk of the tree and a painful moan to escape your throat. Your arm felt as if it were preparing to tear itself from your body, the pain syphoning itself throughout the right side of your body. With the amount of time you had wasted sitting there you had lost even more blood than you had accounted for originally, and would really struggle getting back to the recon point on your own. You could send out a signal and call for backup, but something in your mind immediately rebelled against the idea of bringing anybody with a Magnum and silver bullets any closer to the strange wolf boy that was still in front of you.

Without a word he moved towards you, arms going out as if you scoop you up. You recoiled, your hand tightening around the gun in your lap, your eyes narrowed, “Fuck right off.”

He glared indignantly at you, “Get over yourself. You’re insane if you think I’m accepting you or whatever, but I don’t want to let you die. That’d be distressing and bad for my health.”

You had to squash the voices of your commanders that had reverberated through your head for the past four years as the boy with independently moving ears crouched down and swept you off the forest floor effortlessly. You abstained from putting your arms around him, choosing instead to use you good hand to clutch the wrist of your bad arm in a futile effort to do something about the pain coursing up and down your limb. Another wave of dizziness assaulted your senses, forcing you to drop your head against the hard, bare chest of your supposed ‘mate’ and pray that the world was steadier when you reopened your eyes.

The boy didn’t say anything as he jogged quickly through the forest, dodging boulders and tree roots effortlessly whilst simultaneously managing to keep the ride for you in his arms smooth and as comfortable as was possible. The smell of his skin, woody and warm and so incredibly earthy, was overwhelming you but also worked to calm your heart rate down and ease the throbbing in your chest and your arm.

As you neared the helipad the boy slowed, making sure that each footstep was silent. This was incredibly dangerous for him, getting so close to a government stronghold where other TLs were more than likely to be lingering, but he just continued on.

Once you were close enough to vaguely make out the tall concrete walls through the dense forest the wolf boy set you down, holding your shoulders until he was sure you were standing on your own. He gave you a grim sort of smile that was really no more than pursed lips and turned to go, when you found your hushed voice halting him.

“I’m Y/N.”

He turned slightly, the edges to his annoyed expression softening ever so infinitesimally, “Johnny.”

Then he was gone, disappearing quickly and silently into the dense forestry without another word, leaving you with the pain in your arm and an emptier sort of pain in your chest that you hoped would go away by tomorrow morning. Your arm was plenty painful enough, without your heart getting in the way.

—

A month and a half passed rapidly at the garrison, and had that deployment that fated evening been normal, the time would have passed within a nanosecond. You’d always bemoaned how quickly the full moons seemed to come around, leaving no time for a break between the terrifying expeditions once a month, but this month and a half dragged by with deliberate sluggishness. You had an inkling that it was almost all due to the fact you’d been out of commission whilst your arm healed and your thoughts had been plagued by the distinctive face and scent of the boy from that night. You’d done your utmost to shove thoughts of Johnny from your head, but his image was constantly niggling at the recesses of your mind.

You did your best to stay distracted once your were given the all clear by the garrison med to shoot and train again, but the nine patrols you’d gone on in the past three weeks had seen a massive drop in your kill rate, earning you perplexed scoldings upon return to the garrison each and every time. It wasn’t that your aim had worsened or you suddenly lacked stealth, you just couldn’t find it within you to seek out the wolves with the determination of a month and a half ago. Back then, it had been your entire life, and you had nothing to base your drive on apart from what you sceptically believed from the military and the government. But now every time you saw the manipulated cuts of ferocious werewolves on the news you remembered the warmth of Johnny and the way he had spoken to the fawn and to you, and you couldn’t reconcile the pair.

—

The whir of the helicopter blades prevented you from making any conversation with the other six TLs in your squad that night. None of you were willing to talk, anyway. The sombre mood could be attributed to the huge, spherical moon hanging in the sky, entirely full and ready to wreak havoc on any humans stupid enough to delve into the wolves’ den.

The carrier chopper landed on the helipad closest to the centre of the Gotjawal Forest, the seven of you spilling out into the dark world beyond its metallic confines, armed with nothing except your knives and guns. They were hardly nothing, but you all still felt dwarfed by the trees stretching their branches up around you to scrape the underbelly of the sky and the knowledge that the werewolves, normally gigantic, would be even larger when magnified under the full moon. And more vicious.

You hadn’t been deployed last full moon due to your injury, but you’d had a (relatively) clean bill of health for weeks and the commanders were chomping at the bit to get your out on the field and taking out ten or more wolves a night, as you had been before.

When questioned on your drop in performance, you blamed it on residual pain in your arm, hoping they couldn’t see through you lie. You couldn’t break it to them that that was unlikely. You weren’t very good at lying. You hadn’t required the skill very much.

The seven of you pressed yourselves to the perimeter of the compound, staying out of the way as the hefty helicopter lifted itself into the sky, above the treetops and circled off, leaving you all with no choice until it returned. You all moved towards the gate and punched in the key code and pressed your thumbs to the scanner, partially to open the gate and in part so that the garrison knew who was missing in the field if one of you were to be killed in action.

You filtered out and split up into two groups of two and yourself and two other high ranking TLs in a group of three to spread out in different directions. As your group began to tip-toe through the undergrowth, you found yourself subconsciously drifting from where the other two stuck close together. You knew in which direction to walk to rejoin them, the GPS tracking on your watch ensured that, but they were out of sight and out of earshot. They were far too tense, their palpable fear rolling off them in waves and setting you on edge. If you were actually going to be effective that evening, you didn’t need them distracting you with the possibility that they wouldn’t act. You knew they hadn’t been out on a full moon patrol for several months—all TLs rotated on and off apart from you, who went out every month you were able—and that made them the living embodiment of anxiety. You shouldn’t blame them. Werewolves were terrifying on a normal, sunny day, let alone after midnight when they were at their most powerful.

You moved silently for over an hour, getting further and further from you squadron and the helipad, but surprisingly the uneasy knot in the centre of your chest neither grew nor subsided. It remained irritatingly average in size, not big enough to cause real concern but not small enough to ignore, niggling away at your sanity and agitating you constantly, preventing you from feeling any peace in its entirety.

Eventually you found what you were supposedly looking for. You sheltered behind the scraggly trunk of a tree, watching as a hulking brown wolf buried its nose in the flesh of a wild boar carcass, the smell of the blood of its victim distracting the beast enough to keep you relatively safe. You were astonished by its size, but you knew that it was bigger under the full moon. You shuddered to think of what a truly big alpha looked like that night.

You shifted your grip around the hilt of your gun, curving your arm around the tree and stepping out slightly to get a better aim at the inconveniently positioned wolf. There was no way you could get a kill shot from this angle, any of its soft spots sheltered from the trajectory of your bullet.

You silently manoeuvred yourself through the trees, staying out of sight and working your way around to a position where you could aim at the head of the animal, crouched behind a boulder with the nose of your gun peeking through a clump of spidery tree roots. Your finger settled over the trigger, one eye squinted to focus the other, you took a breath and steadied your pulse and your hand.

You didn’t shoot.

The colour of the wolf was unsettling you. It was a warm, light brown that was a little paler around the muzzle and ears, and it reminded you intensely of the colour of Johnny’s ears that had peaked from his otherwise apparently normal head of hair. You didn’t know what Johnny looked like when he was shifted entirely, didn’t know the colour of his coat well enough. What if this wolf in front of you was Johnny? You didn’t receive the same tell tale signals that a werewolf would when in close proximity to their mate, you just had to rely on your instinct. And you instinct was unfortunately silent.

You found yourself readjusting your hand over the gun in an unnecessary action, a product of your indecision. You knew what all your training, what your commander and your squadron and the garrison wanted you to do. It was why you were there, it would be easy, you would contribute another dead wolf to the extermination cause. You could do it right now, very easily. You were close enough with a clear enough shot. There was no chance you’d miss.

But your fingers stuttered and froze over the trigger, and you knew you couldn’t with the niggling possibility that the wolf was the boy that had carried you, bleeding out and insolent, to the most dangerous place in the forest for him just because he didn’t want you to die. He had rejected you, he didn’t have to save you, but he had. His face was clouding your mind, taking your attention from the wolf at hand, less than five metres from your crouched form. A mistake.

You lowered the gun and rocked back on your heels slightly, almost overbalancing and requiring you to shift a foot to remain upright, scraping the brittle leaves obnoxiously against the rock you were perched on. Another mistake.

The wolf heard you over the sounds of his own smacking jaws, the wild, onyx coloured eyes making contact with your own. As soon as you noticed the pitch-coloured globes you knew for certain it wasn’t Johnny, but that revelation came too late. Your relief and disappointment made you slow, the wolf was on top of you before you could lift your gun or draw your knife.

It leapt over the boulder and pushed you down by the shoulders with its hulking front paws, the weight pressing down on the joints of your shoulders in a way that had a pained scream ripping from your lips. It was a frustrated sound, as well. You couldn’t believe the such a simple situation was going to lead to your downfall. All because you’d been distracted by the anxious knot in your chest.

Saliva dripped onto the heated skin of your cheeks as the werewolf lowered its dropping jowls closer to your face, trying to detect a scent on you. The neutraliser was working, diverting the monster’s attention for a few seconds as it tried to discern what you were in its primarily beastly brain. It decided that your lack of scent didn’t matter, though, and opened its jaws to tear the skin of your face from your skull. You couldn’t reach your knife and your gun arm was immobile under the paw of the creature. You were finished.

The weight of the wolf was removed in an instant, another, huge figure body-slamming the aggressor and sending the wolf flying from above you and rolling to the side. You sat up, fighting the searing pain in your shoulders to watch the new, larger (if that were possible), tawnier wolf lift itself on its back legs and bring its front feet down on the skull of the first, shocked wolf, earning a sickening crack as the original wolf became motionless against the forest floor.

The tawny wolf turned to you, covering the distance in a nanosecond and moving to pin you down once more, its paws stationed on either side of your head and its colossal size boxing you in immediately.

However, the irritating ball in your chest dissolved. The eyes looking down at you were furious but unmistakably the familiar shimmering golden amber you had been looking for in the other wolf.

The creature above you began to morph before your eyes in a process you had never seen before, the entirely animal figure turning into a person with animal characteristics. The eyes and ears remained the same and the hands and feet pinning your body down were still inherently wolfish, but the rest of the body was that of a young man.

The eyes were still infuriated. “What was that?” His voice was cacophonous with rage, “Why didn’t you shoot? Why didn’t you pull the knife I know all you hunters have? Why didn’t you protect yourself?”

You stared blankly up at him, unsure what the correct words were. What did he was to hear from you?

“Stop it!” He implored, jolting his body to show his frustration, his desperation. His ears were twitching this way and that, listening to the forest for any other presences. “Stop just looking at me! Answer me! Why didn’t you do anything?”

You curled your lips inwards, eyes flickering across his face. A hand instinctually came up from where it had lain by your side, the pain in your shoulder practically nonexistent as you moved to trail your fingers along his cheekbone. His eyes widened in shock at your touch, his body involuntarily leaning into the sensation. After indulging the contact for a moment, one of his own hands came up to hold your wrist, halting the movement. His voice was tight with emotion when he spoke for the third time, “No, don’t distract me. Answer my question. I know about you, everyone knows about you. You’ve killed more wolves on your own than the rest of the hunters at your garrison combined. You’re plenty capable. Why didn’t you protect yourself? How could you be so careless?”

Anger flared through you briefly, causing you to tear your wrist from his hold and thump a fist against his bare shoulder. “Because I thought it might have been you, you asshole,” you snapped finally, “last time I only saw you ears, and the other wolf’s coat was a similar colour. I don’t get all the signals you do, I couldn’t tell if it was you or not. By the time I realised, it was too late.”

The anger dissipated immediately from his face, an open, tender expression taking over as he looked down at your exasperated form. You waited for him to answer, to yell at you, to leave. He rejected you, you couldn’t understand why he now choosing to make it harder for the both of you.

In a series of movements too sudden for your stalling mind to keep up with, he rocked backwards into a sitting position and pulled you with him, dragging you into his lap and slamming his lips against yours. You may not have been a werewolf, but your body knew exactly how to react the instant his mouth was on your own, your hands coming up to cradle his face as you melted into the touch. His arms held you against the warmth of his bare torso, lips moving with unbridled desperation to satiate the desire he’d been suppressing for almost two months. His teeth tugged gently at your lower lip as his mouth detached from yours, sucking down your neck before working back up to litter kisses across your cheeks. His mouth came to rest beside your ear, the woody, warm scent that had been tormenting you filling your senses as his words tumbled out in breathy whispers.

“You’ve been driving me insane ever since last time,” he muttered, “I didn’t know how you were, how you arm was, if you lived or bled out.” His embrace tightened ever so slightly, gentle but firm, “Thank god you’re here. Thank god you’re ok. Thank god I have you now.”


End file.
